Sunrise Alarm Clock
Wintertime can be sad. You wake up, it’s dark and you have to get out of bed. The last thing you want to hear is the blaring sound of your alarm clock. I have a hard time waking up on cold mornings in London. Also, I miss waking up to natural light.
This Sunrise Alarm Clock is an alarm clock like any other in that you can set the hour and minute you want to wake up, but with the added benefit of using light to brighten up your bedroom over a period of time like a sunrise to wake you up more naturally.
Code : Github, Tutorial : Instructables.
produced by: Celine Chappert
Tutorial and source code
All the parts for building the circuit and the case, as well as an in-depth tutorial, can be found on Instructables. The code can be downloaded from my Github repo. All of the schematics and build files for the case are available to download from both links.
Conclusion & ideas for further development
I'm very happy with the final result, it was a good learning experience working with super-bright LEDs and other electronics and a good introduction to the laser-cutter. The smaller size is preferable as it stands nicely on a bedside table.
The gradual brightness of the LED was enough to wake me up on cold London mornings so I can say the project was a success 😉
Going further :
- To make our sunrise even more beautiful and realistic, we could make use of RGB LEDs to replicate the palette of the sunrise with a gradient of deep blues to reds/oranges. (Neopixel strips?)
- To make our circuit more sturdy, we could solder all the components together or connect them with a printed circuit board. I didn't do this on purpose in order to be able to re-use my components for other projects.
- It would be nice to add a small LCD display to change the waking time without having to dig into the code, same goes for changing the fade time.
- To go further with material exploration, we could experiment with light diffusing through different mediums. Colored plexiglass or frosted mylar could give amazing results.